April 4, 2015

In the Before Cancer Era

I would have answered each

Of the five phone calls

Between midnight and two

Thirty years doesn't seem that long ago

While living in the same time zone.

I would have kept all the shame

Placed on sea gulls for eating trash

Placed on the fault line’s guilty movement

Blown away by the windy desert

Stayed tattered as I hung on a flimsy clothes line.

In the After Diagnosis Era

I let the phone ring

Again and again

Between midnight and two,

Remember nights

When Mexican men stood

At my window confessing love.

I pay the gatekeeper with roses

The Virgin de Guadalupe showered,

Mortar the discarded petals

Into the cracks of a voice.

April 1, 2015

Vacuuming chemo dust

From under my bed

Where night shadows

Come alive during daylight

When the scar sears my chest.

I am lost in my home

Between stacks of empty boxes

Buried under manila files

Filled with details

All the bodies touched

By my hands

Left behind.

hair wash

First Visit

Sitting at the Dr.'s office

Breast Specialist

OK, I feel fear now

My boob hurts.

I wonder what will be said

When will be the biopsy

How often will i have to 

Come back to this office?

I am alone here.

One person offered to wait with me

I turned her down 

Wanted privacy.

Every time the white door opens

I wonder if this time the nurse will call my name

The fear started two blocks from here

Will sweetness rise out of the pain?  

Driving by Krispy Kreme 

I want to change lanes

Pull into the drive through

Order a glazed doughnut.

I breathe hard

Circular breaths

No stops between rise & fall 

Inhalation exhaling.

Waiting to see the nurse

To wait and see the Dr.

To wait for two biopsies

To wait for both results.

Reminded of being alone

The room has a small tv

The View is on

It diverts my attention.

The gown has only one tie

I can't figure out how to knot it.

The Dr. enters with hands in prayer 

His fingers open like a scallop.

Wet with afterbirth the color of Venus

My muscles squeezed tight

Betrayed by conversation's order

He said, "We can beat it!"

Can I do it....

http://www.napowrimo.net/

Haiku

Skylight frames the night
Black and white beneath my knees
Moon beams on futon

Through the Fire Exit, Down the Rabbit Hole

Kickoff 2013

May You Always Find the Way Out of Locked Places

A Gerbera daisy dropped

On a moist forest floor

In the lateness of your night

In the morning of my day

Hands reach across sheets

Hands reach across states

Fingertips touch sun-tanned skin

Bathed in Mother Ocean

Dried by Brother Wind

In the early pre-dawn

Before roosters crow

Or owls fly home

I know you are awake

Next to nothing between us

Before the map of a planet

Our earthen nature absorbs

The shock and terror

We know capable of love

Your grotto filled with water

Once empty the day before

The fire pit spat ash

Burned from dead flowers

Covered us like dust used to find

Crime scene fingerprints

Pilfered bamboo survives

Huddled in a clump

Plot of dirt saved for flowers

Chairs circle sacred space

Guarded by the old woman living

On the wild corner of the lot

She stirs her iron vat of brine

Boils down our bone baggage

Until the yellow marrow melts

Wheel barrow the color of rust

Mixing bowl for bloody mortar

Bonds your flat rock children

Wall sloped for sliding rain water

Sets pumice cinder-blocks in cement

Sharpens the corners around my heart

Trees with poison ivy spread red pain

Tree with chain embedded in bark rind

Trunk absorbs pain and strain it survives

Tannenbaum thanked three times

Held green bushy needles close

The pine surrendered to the New Year.